Guild Wars 2

Because i’m tired of making complains on how useless they are.

i want someone to convince me they are not completely useless skills that ANet refuses to fix.

Mantras:
What happened when they copied the name from GW1 into a game which wasn’t receptive of the idea. Currently at 2~3 charges, yet balanced around having 3 despite that being a 30pt trait. Individually weak. Use up valuable utility slots.

Can be marginally useful in specific situations and for specialized builds. Overall clunky simply because the double-but-weak-charge design already shows you how borked the design is.

The best benefit to Mantras is the fact that once charged, they can be used at ANY time (stunned, kb, daze, etc). As far as healing, it’s the only mesmer one that does this, and one of the few in the game.

Other than that, Mantra of pain in sPvP is great at finishing off people.

They have specialised uses but not enough to justify traiting them IMO

Mantra of resolve is good in specific scenarios where you’re expecting to receive a lot of conditions. Mantra of concentration can be useful in some situations like jump puzzles where stability would be helpful. Mantra of distraction (especially if you’re using a sword or pistol offhand, and diversion) to chain-stunlock a target. Mantra of pain can be used in tandem with other direct damage abilities to land a massive damage spike.

Downside is each of these require having forward knowledge of the situation and preparing in advance. Mantras individually just arn’t worth carrying about “just in case”

Mantra of Pain: crap damage, mostly used with “heal allies when you cast a mantra” trait because it has 1 sec recharge.
Mantra of Concentration: fairly useless, especially since any opponent that uses lots of CC (mace warrior) won’t let you cast for 4 seconds. Niche use in PvE vs spammed CC, because it’s our only stability skill. As far as stability skills go it’s a bad one. There’s plenty of other stunbreakers and abilities mesmer can use CCed, so stunbreaker portion adds nothing.
Mantra of Resolve: Can be decent, but it’s a mantra and thus crap. I’d rather slot any other cond removal, most notably Phantasmal Disenchanter (though PD is bugged this patch and randomly fails to spawn).
Mantra of Distraction: Long recharge, long cast for 2 dazes? I’ll pass. Don’t forget that 30 sec recharge starts when you expend ALL charges. So if you have 3 uses this ability has an effective recharge of 30+3*5+4 = 49 seconds if you spam it on recharge.
But if you try to use your mantra’s charges intelligently (not just spam them as soon as you cast the mantra) and if you don’t start casting mantra as soon as it recharges (to find the window of opportunity to have an unharrased 4 sec cast) then the turn-around time on this mantra becomes 60+ seconds. This is a problem with all mantras.

In general very few skills in this game have longer than 1 sec, 1.5 sec cast. So those that do better be worth it. Mantras have 4 second cast time. The only other ability with that cast time (not counting channeled) is Guardian’s elite book Full Heal, which is actually worth 4 sec cast. Mantras are not.

4 seconds of not doing damage, of taking damage, you can’t dodge (interrupts the cast) not to mention very heightened probability of getting interrupted anyway makes this ability crap.
Every time I see a mesmer running one of these in pvp I know I’m up against a bad build.

The thing that really bugs me about mantras is when you’ve used a charge on a few of your spells and then you end combat, you cant re-channel to top it back up, you have to stand there and waste the spells and then wait for the cooldown before getting your 3 charges back (assuming you’re going for that trait ofc)

I really liked the single-use Mantras before, tbh. They were too weak, a result of being able to slot all of them to get amazing alpha-strike power, but even then I didn’t see the big deal compared to other alpha-strike setups like BS Thief or 100b Warrior.

The way they are now, they’ve tried to make them more “normal”. Which is exactly what Mantras should not be about, they’re frontloading skills. Very long recast leaving you very vulnerable in return for fully instant but full-power skills. Only now they chopped off the “full-power”, making them quite dubious to use.

The only real use I see for mantras atm is full glasscannon “I hope this works” type builds. With the 30 point Domination trait, have all mantras ready, blast dudes with phantasms and if they die then great. If not well then good luck with that

Mantra of Pain is the only one I’ve used seriously so far. When traited Mantra of Pain gives you three shots that each do 324 damage (discounting attack rating and whatnot) and hit from 1200 yards away. If you get a bunch of clones out, have them all explode at your enemy, and then use this while that is going on you can do quite a bit of burst damage which usually has the effect of surprising and putting your foe on the offensive and hurting him quite badly. If you’re Sword/Something like me then try to get yourself close to the enemy by the time you fire off the third Mantra of Pain so that you can follow up with some angry close ranged burst damage to try and finish him off.

Problems with Mantra of Pain are that its’ not that great outside some ranged burst qualities, and its’ not that much better than just using a Greatsword’s auto-attack. This fact alone makes their spot in your trait trees really questionable besides; One of Domination’s better traits is Greatsword Training. Figure that one out for me.

Mantra of Concentration can be useful if you need a stun breaker. 3 Charges should last you awhile, but I’d still always recast it whenever its’ up if nobody is currently munching on your face. Compared to our other options it has a lot more casts to it and is ready much more often. Everything else has a recast of an upwards of 40 seconds, and while that’s good for one stun, it doesn’t really help you much if you get hit with another. Mantra of Concentration also offers stability for a measly 2 seconds, which you can extend to 6 seconds if you really need to. If you’re quite a bit better at this game than I am I could see you using this ability proactively to sort of “dodge” condition effects that stability protects against.

Mantra of Distraction Is hard for me to recommend. It can daze your enemy for 3 seconds, but that’s only if you are traited and that’s the only thing it does. Maaaybe if you have a really heavy boon duration build, and maaaybe if you stack it with some other dazes you have, and maaaaybe if you pair it up with other defensive moves you can use this to harass your enemy and keep him in a state of frustration as he can’t hit you. That’s an awful lot of specialization for one ability though.

Mantra of Resolve is another ability that I can see being useful, as it would technically break stuns even after you get hit with them and remove that dastardly blindness from screwing with your phantasms. Again, it also has a very short recast timer, meaning that you can refresh it as soon as your done being chomped on by an enemy. This along with Mantra of Concentration are probably two of the most under appreciated skills in the game as they can really help keep the pressure off.

Ultimately the key to using mantras effectively seems to be the idea of being proactive about them. They can be quite beneficial if they’re ready before you go into combat, but trying to use them as a more traditional reactionary ability is just going to get yourself killed while you stand there for four and a half seconds casting your spell. Mantras can also be a bit tricky to use effectively the more of them you have. While you won’t be using all your mantra charges every fight, its’ quite a bit different to spend 4 seconds casting between a fight and to spend 12 because you blew all your mantras. Having to go 30 points deep into the Domination tree is also a bit of a detriment, though a few of them still retain some use even if you don’t.

To sum them up in one word: clunky.

The main problem, apart from Mantras being balanced around traits and therefore quite worthless untraited; is that if you partially discharge a Mantra during battle you must fully discharge it, then wait for it to cool down, then channel it again if you want to get yourself back to fully charge the Mantra. If you’re using four Mantras that can quickly become a nightmare.

I like using the condition removing mantra, since null field wont last long and has a long cd. Byebye poison and burning :P

I too like using Mantra of Resolve, but that’s mainly because we don’t have anything better. Arcane Thievery and Phantasmal Disenchanter both require a target and fail if the target blocks/dodges/stealths/moves out of LoS, which is not acceptable when you need to remove a potentially lethal condition. Null Field’s CD is long and it is not instant, place it removes one condition per second and lasts only four seconds. Mantra of Resolve however is instant, has two charges and is on a relatively short CD of 24s.

I use mantra of resolve when soloing, as said by the posters above, the cooldown and condition removal is better than null field and Sword #1 and GS #3 already give me all the boon removal I need.
In group situations I always run null-field instead.

I’ll use the toughness boost to tank through trash mobs or to move from one spot to another in wvw, comes in handy sometimes.

I use the mantra mostly for AoE heals though, and the fact I never have a condition sitting on me at any point

ps: +4% damage per mantra prepared? yes please.